Page 21 of The Trouble With Spells
“Michael!” Callum’s voice filled my ears like a vacuum, barely there. All I could hear was my heartbeat, thumping loudly and too fast. Pain exploded from every part of my brain, so intense I couldn’t think or see. It consumed me until all I knew was blinding agony, until I thought it was going to explode.
Gentle hands touched mine, covering them, and just like before, the pain vanished almost instantly. Leaving me a panting, shaking, balled up wreck on Callum’s couch.What the ever-loving fuck was happening to me?
Breathing hard, I squinted, and Callum’s anxious face came into focus in front of me. “What is happening to me?” My voice was raw, ragged.
Callum chewed nervously on his bottom lip and pushed his black frames back up his nose. “Um…I’m not sure.”
He stood, peering down at me with worried eyes, wrinkling his nose. If I hadn’t been trying to breathe normally again, and not freak the fuck out, I would have found his nose scrunching adorable. “I want to try something. Test a theory.”
“Sure,” flopping a weak hand his way, I gave him the ‘do your best’ sign. Honestly, I didn’t have the energy to even move right then, so he could do whatever and I’d probably let it happen.
I watched as he took a backwards step away from me, then another, his eyes never leaving my face. When he got just past the roughly ten-foot mark, my head exploded, ripping an involuntary scream from me. “Stop! Make it stop!”
Much quicker than before, it miraculously did.
Gasping for air, I blinked up at Callum, towering over my prone figure. “Callum?”
“Oh dear.”
Something in his tone had me pushing myself up to a sitting position. Sweat ran down my brow, while tremors raced across my body. “Callum?”
Wringing his hands, he looked visibly pale and distraught. “Oh dear.”
“Stop saying that and tell me what is happening to me?” My voice came out sharper than I intended, but I never responded well to pain. I was the proverbial bear with a sore paw whenever I was hurt.
He sank down next to me, his thigh resting against mine, his body heat seeping into me. Sagging, I leaned into him, soaking in his heat and the comfort his presence somehow brought me. “I’m sorry, Michael.”
Turning to face him, I stared into his troubled eyes. “What did you do?”
He took a breath, his chest expanding with the force of it, stretching the material of his shirt tightly, before letting it out in a loud whoosh. “I shouldn’t have tried to do a reversal spell. I shouldn’t have tried to doanyspell. Spell casting and me, we don’t…mix.”
Taking a minute to sort his words out in my aching head, I finally asked, “What exactly does that mean? And please keep in mind, that until a couple of days ago, I didn’t believe in any of this,” I waved my arm around weakly. “Not witches, spells, curses, hexes…all of it. Any of it. So, talk to me like I have no clue what you mean.”
Because honestly, I really didn’t. I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that witches were real. That I had a spell placed on me by a pissed off hottie I’d picked up in a club, and that I was intensely attracted to Callum,who apparently, while a real witch, wasn’t the best witch around.
“We should have waited for Daphne,” he muttered, running his hands through his thick black hair, and making it go even more wild over his head. “I promised them I wouldn’t do any spells.”
Well, this–whatever this was–wasn’t getting any better.
“You promised them you wouldn’t do any spells.” Slowly, I repeated his words, like that would make any of this better.
Callum nodded, pushing his glasses up. “I’m not great at spell casting. I never have been. My spells tend to go a bit…off-kilter.” He chewed on his thumb nail some more. “My family made me promise that I wouldn’t do any spell casting while they are away. But then you sorta blew in, and you were so desperate to have the spell broken. And you didn’t even bat an eye when I told you I was a witch, even though you’re a complete non-believer.”
Holding up one hand weakly to stop him from saying anything else, I tried to stay calm. “You aren’t great at spell casting?”
He shook his head, still chewing on his nail.
“But you did it anyway?”
He nodded, this time in an up and down, affirmative motion.
“Something always goes…wrong with your spells?”
A slower nod of his head this time. He pushed his glasses up, peering at me apprehensively through the lenses.
Running a shaky hand down my face, I silently wondered how my life had gotten to this place in just a couple of days. “Then why did you do it?”
He sighed heavily, sitting back down next to me, his hands gripping his thighs tightly. “I didn’t want you to leave yet, and it was just a simple reversal spell. It should have been super easy. A toddler witch should have been able to reverse it.” Sighing defeatedly, he sank back into the cushions. “I should have known better. I’m the worst witch that ever witched.”
